Freshness matters. That's the conclusion to be drawn from the chart of the top 20 best-selling manga of July 2018, based on NPD BookScan data for July (7/1/2018 – 7/29/18) provided to ICv2. Six of the top 20 were July releases, including volume 39 of Berserk and volume 73 of Bleach, two long-running series that don't hit the charts much any more. Volume 25 of Attack on Titan, another July release, brings that series back to the top 20 as well.

The top three manga on the chart are the other three July releases. My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is a spinoff of My Hero Academia that is set in the same world but starring different characters (see "Review: ‘My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ Vol. 1 TP (Manga)"). The latest volumes of One-Punch Man and Dragon Ball Super took the top two spots. What's missing from this chart, compared to previous months, is Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which hasn't had a new volume out since March.

On the Superhero chart, DC has the edge with 11 titles (including two from their Vertigo imprint), compared to seven from Marvel. The other two are from Dark Horse. The Hellboy omnibus is a July release, while that Overwatch anthology, which came out in October 2017, has charted every month since January. Like a balloon running out of helium, it is slowly sinking, but it's still there.

The Author category is sort of a catchall, and that's particularly true this month: We lead off with two editions of The Adventure Zone, followed by Book One of March, a Neil Gaiman title, a book by an Instagram celebrity, a couple of volumes of Saga, and Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, the first graphic novel to make the longlist for the Man Booker prize. If there is a pattern to this, it's that people like to read lots of different stuff, although it's worth noting that half the titles are from Image Comics.

NPD BookScan collects weekly point-of-sale data on print books from over 16,000 locations including e-tailers, chains, mass merchandisers, independent bookstores, and more. NPD BookScan covers approximately 85% of the U.S. trade print book market.e ranks on this chart are based on piece sales. Some publishers classify titles that are primarily text, or art books, as graphic novels; we've removed those titles from the ranking above.